Grandparents help children get on with life after tragedy

EDWARDSVILLE — It’s hard to believe that anything good could come of the tragic event in October that left James and Heather Hawley’s parents dead.

But Ruth Richards, the children’s grandmother and legal guardian, believes the children now can lead more normal lives. No longer will the children have to cope with the constant battles sometimes violent battles between their divorced parents.

The fighting ended on a rainy night last October in Eudora when Douglas W. Hawley shot and killed his ex-wife, Kimberly. After Kim’s death, Mrs. Richards and her husband, Roy, became guardians of their daughter’s two children. The Richards say the children now can live in peace.

“Now they have a different lifestyle,” Mrs. Richards said recently, sitting in a recliner in the front room of her Edwardsville home. “There’s no more fighting and all the turmoil that kids should not have to go through.”

MRS. RICHARDS said that James, 9, and Heather, 8, were forced to endure the constant squabbling between their parents, who were divorced. That bickering boiled into a dramatic display of emotion the night of Oct. 27, 1989, in front of a house in the 700 block of Maple Street in Eudora. James and Heather were inside the house with their babysitter.

That night, Douglas W. Hawley, the children’s father, shot and killed his ex-wife with a 10-gauge shotgun while she sat with a friend in a pickup truck in the babysitter’s driveway.

Douglas Hawley was found a short time later about two miles from the scene in a rural area, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

A blast from the shotgun that killed Kimberly Hawley also injured Donnie Harris, who was with her in the truck. Harris was rushed to a Kansas City, Kan., hospital, but was left nearly blind from the incident.

IN A RECENT interview, Harris calmly spoke about the incident as he sat in the living room of his parents’ home, only blocks away from where the shooting took place.

He remembers the night vividly, although he’s had to piece together parts of the story from others’ accounts. And he has his own physical scars to help jog his memory.

One gunshot struck him in the head, leaving him blind in both eyes. Doctors have told him he will never see again, but he remains hopeful that the sight in his left eye may return.

“I’ve got five pellets in my brain,” said Harris, who now wears sunglasses. “In my left eye, I’m beginning to see a little bit of daylight. In my right eye, there’s no chance at all. My left eye they said I wouldn’t see daylight or anything. So there’s a chance I could get fairly good eyesight.

“It slows me down,” Harris said of his blindness. “But I don’t have any plans of giving things up.”

HE WAS FIRST taken to Kansas University Medical Center before being transferred to Shawnee Mission Medical Center. It took some time before he could deal with Kim’s death.

“They had me so doped up,” he said. “When I came to, I kept asking about Kim. You know it’s true, but it doesn’t hit you. At Shawnee Mission, I latched on to Kim being gone.”

Since then, it’s been a coping process for Harris and for Kimberly Hawley’s two children.

“I’d never dealt with death that close,” said the 25-year-old Harris.

“There are a lot of things worse than that,” he said. “I’m still alive. Those kids, they’re the ones doing the suffering. What happened to me is nothing compared to what they’re going through. But those kids they’re tough.”

He tries to spend as much time as he can with the children and takes them candy or money each visit, and he stops by the cemetery frequently to put flowers on Kim’s grave.

AT ONE POINT, when Harris was at an emotional low following the shooting, the children sat on each side of him and took his hands into theirs.

“They said, `If mommy was alive, she’d say that something good comes out of everything bad,'” Harris recalled with a smile. “When those kids told me that, that sure gave me a big pickup.”

Mrs. Richards said her grandchildren did not actually see the shooting, but said they have told her they heard their mother’s screams and then the shotgun blasts.

Despite the seemingly unbeatable odds against them, it appears the children are getting along well in their new home in Edwardsville.

Each day they return home from school and eat cookies that their grandmother has set out for them. They report what they did that day in school, they watch television, they play games and, like any other brother and sister, they tease each other.

JAMES, A third-grader, has made a new set of friends at school and reports that he even has found a girlfriend. His grades have landed him on the school honor roll and he has returned home from school with countless certificates recognizing him for his achievements.

He has joined Cub Scouts to keep up with his new friends and says he enjoys the activities the club has to offer.

James said he likes school, although he often finds he’s bored. His favorite subject is math, “because it’s better than reading. You just have to answer problems.”

But outside of school, James’ biggest interest is baseball the electronic baseball game that Harris gave to him, his collection of hundreds of baseball cards and, most of all, tracking his favorite team, the Kansas City Royals.

HEATHER, a first-grader, is unlike her brother in that she likes to read and write. She especially likes to spell and needs little encouragement to display a stack of exemplary spelling tests she has brought home.

Heather also says she likes her new school and its students.

James and Heather and their grandparents all attend counseling at a Bonner Springs clinic to help them deal with what has happened to their family. Mrs. Richards said the counseling helps them all to understand what happened and how to cope, but she added that many times it is difficult to accept what happened.

“Sometimes it is hard to hold back the hatred and the anger,” she said. “Donnie and I talked about this and said there has got to be a reason for all of this and that something good has to come out of it. But we don’t always know why things happen.

“It’s hard to believe that she had such a bad life and as soon as she meets someone nice, she’s gone, just like that.”

HER HUSBAND, Roy, said he and his wife have had to make a tremendous adjustment in their lives. Yet he remains optimistic.

“It’s all going as well as could be expected,” Roy Richards said. “Here I am, a 63-year-old man having to raise a family again, but we’ll make it.”

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